aca.wind:art

WIND:ART ACA Sept 2003
Atlantic Center for the Arts

WIND:ART

press

Notes on the Background of Events Leading Up to WindArt at ACA
As Director Emeritus of the Museum of American Craft in New York City and curator of the Museum's 2002 landmark exhibition, "Objects for Use/Handmade by Design," Paul Smith selected two artists to represent contemporary US kite making: Tal Streeter, the first fine artist in the west to turn to kite making as an art form and Marc Ricketts, in the foreground of the newest and most innovative kite artists. Following the exhibition Paul, as a member of the National Council of the Atlantic Center for the Arts, raised the idea of an extended kite program at ACA, recommending Tal and Marc as Master Artists to the ACA Director who happily endorsed Paul's proposal. Mark was given the responsibility of organizing and choosing Associates in the "Performance/Event" component, while Tal was given responsibility for shaping and directing the over-all program. Tal worked on the program in the six months prior to the event, recommending Katsutaka Murooka as a third Master Artist to head up "Kite Aerial Photography & Technology," as well as choosing all ten Guest Visiting Artists and the Associates connected with both his own "Beyond Modern Kites" component and Murooka's KAP & Technology. Tal commented, "My underlying concept for WINDART was to introduce and investigate the possibilities of kites and "wind art" in as wide a range of contemporary art forms as possible. The artists I sought out to participate in the program were drawn not only from kite art being made around the world, but sculpture, web and computer design, opera composition, art photography, dance choreographer, film making, multi-media, fabric, environmental and conceptual art-artists already well-established in their various fields. Marc, in a like fashion, chose a wide range of artists for the Performance/Event: innovative designers, aerial performers, stage and lighting artists and musicians."
The resulting collaborations and cross- fertilization among the three focus areas and the ten Guest Visiting Artists all working under the umbrella of WINDART were truly amazing. As one participant put it, "ACA WINDART was a kind of landmark event, inspiring fresh, new ideas in the wider art community. Not unlike the historic occasion of Black Mountain College whose widely divergent participants-Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Bucky Fuller and Robert Rauschenberg-instilled such breadth and innovation into the conception of emerging art forms." [tal streeter]

COVER STORY by ACA - june 2003:

Kites… art that flies
An artists-in-residence program exploring the art of kite making and kite performance will be held at Atlantic Center for the Arts, September 8 - 28, culminating in a kite festival on the beaches of New Smyrna. The two-day festival will feature an exhibition of kites, kite making demonstrations, kite flying and performance, as well as special youth programs. The resident artists will participate in this event in kite flying, kite exhibiting and outreach assistance; aerial kite photographers will document the project through their aerial photography techniques.
WINDART, a project-oriented residency, features three master kite artists. Tal Streeter, sculptor, sky artist, and author, will lead "WINDART Sculpture: Beyond Modern Kites." Katsutaka Murooka, kite artist, aerial photographer, and architectural designer will lead "WINDART Technology and Aerial Photography." Marc Ricketts, kite performance artist, architect and holder of an important art kite patent, will lead "WINDART Events and Performance." In addition, a group of about 10 distinguished kite/wind artists will be invited to be part of the artists-in-residence sessions to either explore an independent project or collaborate with the other artists. "

IN FOCUS

Paul Smith became involved with ACA in its early years. For the past two decades, Paul has been an invaluable resource to the ACA program staff with his expertise in craft and design, his many influential contacts, as well as his broad knowledge of contemporary art.

ACA: First, talk a little about your background and your involvement with the American Craft Museum.
P.S.: After attending art school, my main interest was in painting and later as I explored craft skills, I focused on wood-turning and jewelry. This led me to involvement with craft organizations and, in 1957, resulted in my moving from Buffalo to New York City to join the staff of the American Craftsmen's Council, a national organization that founded the Museum of Contemporary Crafts (American Craft Museum, until recently the Museum of Arts and Design). It also published a magazine and conducted a variety of educational programs including traveling exhibitions, which I developed. I soon became involved with the museum and was appointed director in 1963, a position I held until 1987 when I became Director Emeritus. My 24 years with the Museum proved a challenging and exciting career as it paralleled the growth of the studio craft movement in America.

As the Museum was in its formative stage, it was an opportunity to create an identity for a specialized institution. Our emphasis was on contemporary artists working in the craft media, and we presented many shows reporting on new directions in ceramics, fiber, metal, wood, or glass, and featured many international exhibitions. Most exciting was the opportunity to develop theme shows. To bring attention to the art and beauty of food, we organized Cookies and Breads: The Baker's Art and The Confectioner's Art. Another experiment was a week session on IDEAS WANTED. We asked the public for their thoughts for new programs or on any subject they wished to address, which resulted in thousands of comments - some serious, some frivolous. It was great to explore new ways of reaching and involving the public.

ACA: Is there a difference between a craft museum and an art museum?
P.S.: I consider the museum an art museum with a focus on craft and design. As a specialized institution, it relates to a specific area of the arts, as the International Center for Photography features photo arts and the Museum of American Folk Art represents traditional art. At the time the museum was founded in 1957, it was the first contemporary craft museum in the U.S. Today there are several in different areas of the country, and many art museums that collect and originate craft exhibitions. I feel that the museum, since its founding, has set standards and acquainted the public to a significant area of the arts that today has become internationally recognized. In the early 90's, after I left the museum, I organized a show titled CRAFT TODAY USA which traveled to 15 cities in Europe as an official government sponsored show under the auspices of the USIA Arts American program. Its tour paralleled the freeing of Eastern Europe; in Warsaw it attracted 40,000 people in one month.

ACA: One of the last exhibitions you curated for the American Craft Museum was OBJECTS FOR USE:Handmade by Design. Talk about this and how it led to your interest in kites.
P.S.: I have a good overview of the past, which helps to sense current trends. I felt it was timely to do a major survey of production craft studios with a focus on objects made for specific use, and did extensive research over a three-year period. As I decided to include a section dealing with handmade objects created for sports, music and play, it required research into areas that I was not familiar. I attended the Wooden Boat Show, and an Early Music festival in Boston that featured instrument makers. When I was at an ACA National Council meeting, knowing (ACA staffers) Jim (Frost) and Nick (Conroy) are surfers, I sought their advice and went to Cocoa Beach to explore sources for surfboard makers. It was there that I came upon a kite shop that provoked the thought that kites should be included in the section on "play." I ended up including two kite makers in the book and exhibition. One was Tal Streeter, a master art kite maker, and the other was Marc Ricketts, who holds a patent for a kite structure that will fly without wind and now does performance. Both will be part of WINDART.

My preliminary research on kite making whet my appetite to learn more about the subject. As the role of ACA's National Council is to be a resource for artists and advise on programs, I suggested a focus on kites, which I thought could make a great residency, to the enthusiastic response of the ACA staff. I joined the American Kite Association, and attended its national conference in Ocean City, Maryland. There I met Scott Skinner, a kite maker and collector who founded the Drachen Foundation, who was a great resource for ideas. On my return trip to New York, I came up with the title WINDART and a structure to focus on three areas - the kite and photography; the kite, art, craft, design; and the kite and performance. For the past year, I have been working closely with Tal Streeter, who has been an invaluable help in forming what I think will be a unique session at ACA.

ACA: Talk about kites as an artform, in the sense of fine art, popular, and folk art.
P.S.: Kite making and flying has a long history, and continues to be an integral part of many traditional festivals and ceremonies throughout the world. Today there is a vast range of kite activity, from flying manufactured kites to artists creating sculptural forms and staging events. The kite remains a universal object combining art, craft, science, engineering and design, and is associated with play, as well as celebration.

ACA: You have been working with the ACA program department in coordinating the upcoming WINDART residency. What do you expect will come from this residency?
P.S.: As ACA is a place to explore and exchange ideas, to expect or predict a result would defeat the intent of the session. I would hope that the carefully selected group of 13 invited artists along with the associates should foster a dynamic exchange that will advance the art of the kite to a new level and hopefully each participant will expand their horizons and benefit from the exchange. I hope the WINDART activities open to the public in New Symrna Beach will provide a new and stimulating event for the community.

Recently on the train from Washington, DC, I ran into Grace Glueck, a New York Times art critic, who asked about my current activities. When I described WINDART, she asked, "Do you fly kites?" When I said no, she said, "Well then, you are a kite voyeur." I thought that was a nice distinction and yes, there will be a place for the kite observer.

An Interview With ACA WINDART Master Artist, Tal Streeter
Known for large-scale sculptural works in steel reaching heights of 70 feet and weighing thousands of pounds, Tal Streeter's lifetime work as an artist has been oriented to directing viewers' thoughts toward the sky. His monumental sculptures, "ladders into the sky," parallel other, very unusual dimensions of this artist's work. He is recognized as being the first fine artist of the Western world to turn his attention to the art and craft of kite making, studying traditional kite making in Japan, traveling the world over to search out kite lore, producing and exhibiting his own kites as well kites acquired in his travels (drawn from a collection numbering in the thousands) in museums and galleries, and authoring numerous articles and seminal books on the ancient, traditional and contemporary form of both western and eastern kites. ACA's Nancy Lowden Norman recently posed a few questions to Mr. Streeter.
NLN: There is a long tradition of kites globally, from Indonesian fishing kites, the mulberry paper and bamboo kites of Japan, kite fighting in Afghanistan, and kites as an important tool in both historical and contemporary aeronautical research - as I gleaned from your most recent book, The Philosopher's Kite. Can you tell us a little about these traditions of kites as science, sport and art?
TS: "A little?" I'm inclined to be long-winded, an affliction, perhaps a subtext, of someone who constantly prays for winds to carry his kites out into the sky. I've written six or seven books and have more in the works, trying to get the whole story and the emotional responses raised by kites worldwide onto reader's bookshelves. It is a rich, rich subject. One just loaded with hugely divergent, fascinating details. You mentioned having visited Guatemala for their "Day of the Dead" celebration where villagers make kites 30-feet in diameter flown in the hillside cemeteries to release the spirits of the dead-"Physically and spiritually," you said, "truly one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen." Beautiful indeed, these Guatemalan kites made of tissue paper on such a large scale. In the sky, lit from behind, they take on the appearance of huge stained-glass windows.
Kites in Afghanistan are flown at heights approaching three miles! Fighting kites in India celebrate the arrival of Spring; in the city of Jaipur alone, there are millions of tiny kites flying, absolutely millions. Jaipur citizens play a kite cutting game, the kite lines coated with ground glass. Japanese kites are truly works of art, paintings in the sky; their makers honored as living national treasures. Japanese kite makers can often trace this family heritage back 300 years and more.
There's absolutely no question that the airplane began with research into the aerodynamic laws governing the flight of kites. The Wright Brother's first experiments were based on bi-wing kites designed by a New Zealander living in Australia, Lawrence Hargrave. And large kites!? There are some whoppers. For example, the parafoil, a modern stickless kite (which may be outfitted as a parachute, a wing and a racing yacht's spinnaker); in research and development at NASA, as the wing of an emergency return vehicle for the International Space Station, this particular kite/wing/parachute is roughly half the size of a football field.
NLN: How would you define kite art? What are some of the materials used in contemporary kite making?
TS: A simple definition for sky art, WINDART, kite art? Forgoing a long-winded answer: "Art that flies." Art as we know it today is constantly being redefined, moving forward, a product of societal changes, artist's creativity and new materials. In my early days as a sculptor, there were only three materials considered legitimate for exhibition in museums: stone, bronze and wood (essentially employing the techniques of carving, modeling in clay and casting in metal). One of the problems of contemporary art is the limitation imposed by what we accept and consider art to be, at any moment. I, for one, would gladly see the end of the museums displaying "painting" and "sculpture" replacing them with something like "provocative, novel ideas." We've now accepted a supermarket full of provocative and novel ideas, and who dare question their authenticity as art? Laser light art, photographs, video/movies, all the forms of objects, performance art and events that might include various forms of "sky art" and "windart," actually an endless list of provocative and novel ideas, the newer kids in the museums.
The older forms of so-called fine art, well, they'll be around well into the future and respected, but don't they seem to fit more comfortably in the category of art history? We, in the West, have a very dogmatic prejudice for western art as the be all and end all. From my perspective, traditional African carving is the greatest sculpture of all time and will conceivably never be equaled by any culture in the world. You wouldn't know this by reading books on the great art of the world. Popular art? Fine Art? Crafts? Kites? Automobiles? Painting? (well, I consider this to surely fall into the category of art history). I don't find it useful to separate these out into what I consider to be outmoded categories: sculpture, painting fine arts, etc.
NLN: The residency is not just about kite making, but also about aerial photography, kite dance/theater, and your own area, "Beyond Modern Kites." In this context, what's the kite festival all about?
TS: Kite festivals vary around the world. In the United States and Europe there is a mixture of very talented and inventive "amateurs," as well as the first level of the many grades one advances through, absorbed. Kite first grade begins with "store-bought" ice cream cone kites, super hero kites and rainbow kites. Kite first grade for me began at age nine when I made what was then the US's traditional diamond two-stick Eddy/Malay kite out of some pine sticks my father cut out for me and I covered with a flattened out brown paper bag. This kite provided me with two summers of absolute joy (more than a fair amount of time each evening spent untangling great balls of string). I repeated kite first grade around my 30th birthday, flying a small black plastic delta with two big eyes, mimicking the appearance of a scary bat. I flew this kite from the hillside behind my house, with several thousand feet of line, tying it off on a bush, leaving it to fly overnight; then first thing in the morning going out to check to see if it was still in the sky.
The WINDART kite festival to be held on New Smyrna Beach at the conclusion of the ACA WINDART program will be an opportunity to view the work of a very, very select group of contemporary kite artists drawn from around the world. The second half of the New Smyrna Kite Festival will find these very same kite artists, flying their own works, as well as helping to fly what will no doubt be some great little bats and ice cream cones, as well as, we hope, the kites of kite enthusiasts from the larger Florida community, flying what will surely be their own labors of love, and what may be for us all as an audience of watchers, the opportunity of a first look at examples "provocative and novel ideas;" Kite Art, Sky Art, WINDART.